The GOP Lied About Using Racial Data To Gerrymander

While North Carolina may be the epicenter of GOP racial gerrymandering, it is hardly the only state in which the GOP has gerrymandered districts to dilute minority voting strength.  Indeed, Virginia had some of its congressional districts redrawn to undo racial gerrymandering and the Virginia GOP is still litigating to try to stop new, non-gerrymandered districts from being in place for the 2019 elections for the Virginia General Assembly where every seat in the House of Delegates and Senate is up for election.  The GOP, of course, never admits that race is the main motivator behind its drawing of election districts.  The alleged party of "Christian values" would much prefer to lie about its true motives.  In North Carolina, however, the lie has now been exposed thanks to the daughter of that state's main architect of racially gerrymandered districts who turned over her late father's computer drives to those challenging the GOP's districts.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at documentation of what many always suspected.  Here are excerpts:

North Carolina Republicans lied to a federal court in 2017 when they claimed that they didn’t use racial data about voters as they drew new electoral maps, according to a blistering filing in a partisan gerrymandering lawsuit this week.

Common Cause of North Carolina, the lead plaintiff in the case, says the state’s legislative maps are so gerrymandered to benefit Republicans that they violate the state’s constitution. The daughter of Thomas Hofeller, a GOP master of gerrymandering who assisted lawmakers in drawing the maps, gave the files to the voting rights group. Stephanie Hofeller found the files after her father died last August, and lawyers representing Common Cause subpoenaed them.

The files contained evidence that North Carolina Republicans misled the court ― both about how racial data was considered in creating the maps and their ability to create new ones in time for a special election, according to the filing. The court opted not to order special elections in 2017, leaving lawmakers elected under racially gerrymandered maps in power for a little bit longer.

North Carolina has been ground zero in the battle over redistricting over the last decade. The Supreme Court is set to rule this month on whether the state’s congressional map is unconstitutionally gerrymandered for partisan gain. The new filings suggest the extent to which lawmakers were willing to go to preserve their power.

After getting caught racially gerrymandering in 2017, the North Carolina lawmakers told the court late they didn’t use racial data when they drew the new maps. Lawmakers told the court in September 2017 that data regarding race of voters “was not even loaded into the computer used by the map drawer to construct the districts.”

But Hofeller’s files show he did consider racial data when drawing the maps, according to the filing. All of Hofeller’s draft maps include racial data, the lawyers said.

The North Carolina lawmakers statements to the court came after the court had found in 2017 that 28 districts had been unlawfully racially gerrymandered. The next scheduled elections were set for 2018, but the plaintiffs in the case wanted the state to hold special elections in 2017 so voting would not take place under the racially-gerrymandered maps. In a July filing before the court, lawyers for the lawmakers said they needed time that year to develop a record, get public input and implement a new map. Ultimately, the court sided with lawmakers and decided not to order special elections in 2017.

The lawmakers were lying to the court about needing more time though, lawyers for the plaintiffs say. Hofeller’s files show that when the lawmakers made that claim, the mapmaker had already completed several draft maps and nearly all of the new state Senate and state House plans, the lawyers wrote.

Lawyers representing North Carolina lawmakers did not immediately return a request for comment.

Hofeller’s files first drew national attention last week as part of a challenge to a citizenship question to the census. Lawyers from Arnold & Porter, representing plaintiffs in both the census and North Carolina suit, discovered evidence that Hofeller helped a Commerce Department official compose what would become the official rationale for getting the citizenship question on the census.

The lawyers say their discovery is particularly alarming because Hofeller conducted a 2015 study showing that adding a citizenship question was a necessary precondition to being able to draw electoral districts based only on the number of citizens, not all persons. Drawing districts that way, Hofeller wrote in the study, would benefit white people and Republicans. The Justice Department denies Hofeller influenced the Justice Department official who drafted the formal request for a citizenship question.

After the census accusations, lawyers representing North Carolina Republicans tried to block Arnold & Porter lawyers from reviewing Stephanie Hofeller’s documents and suggested they were improperly obtained. R. Stanton Jones, a lawyer at the firm, responded in a letter Wednesday calling those accusations “baseless in every respect” and was an attempt to intimidate lawyers.

Stephanie Hofeller told The New York Times in an interview that allies of her father were putting pressure on her to keep the hard drives private. That pressure, she told the Times, only made her more resistant to do so.

Lying is now a Republican value - just as it is with the Christofascists and white supremacists who now control the party base - and Donald Trump, the liar-in-chief. 

The GOP Effort to Maintain A White Man’s Republic

Trump, Pence and Ross.

Numerous studies have shown that despite the myth that economic angst motivated whites to vote for Donald Trump in 2016, the real motivation was racial and a desire to protect white privilege and white political power.  Under Trump, the GOP has moved from dog whistle racism to overt and express calls to white racism and has emboldened white supremacists across the country.  Having spent last weekend in Charlottesville with family and attending my college reunion, that community remains traumatized over the actions of Trump emboldened white supremacists and Neo-Nazis - those who Trump called "very good people."  Sadly, as a piece in The Atlantic argues, the GOP agenda is to uphold white political power and domination at the expense of racial minorities. Now, the looming question is whether the Supreme Court will validate this effort by allowing the Trump/Pence regime to add a citizenship question to the U.S. census to skew the results to increase white representation.  Here are article highlights:

The disparate approaches taken by two of the Court’s conservatives to the Voting Rights Act reflect the right’s dueling impulses toward civil-rights laws. Where Scalia rejected the very effort to guarantee black people the same right to cast a ballot as white people as a “racial entitlement,” Roberts insisted that he agreed with the law’s underlying premises, but that the statute now did more harm than good.

Lingering beneath the surface was a defining question for the American right: Does it agree with Roberts that “any discrimination in voting is too much”? Or with Scalia, who saw ensuring equal participation in the polity as a black “racial entitlement”?

The Supreme Court’s looming decision over the addition of the citizenship question on the U.S. census will hinge on the answer to that question. The census provides the basis for congressional apportionment and the distribution of federal resources. Empirical studies of the impact of adding the question have determined that it would result in a dramatic undercount of Latinos and immigrants—exactly contrary to one of the Donald Trump administration’s stated rationales, that it would provide a more accurate count.

Since the rise of Trump, the American right has been offered a stark choice between the democratic ideals it has long claimed to believe in, and the sectarian ethno-nationalism of the president, which privileges white identity and right-wing Christianity over all. Scalia didn’t quite have it right: The fundamental question for American democracy since the founding has indeed been whether it is a “racial entitlement,” but only because of those who have tried for centuries to ensure that white people alone are entitled to it.

The Roberts Court has already taken steps in this direction. Last year it endorsed Trump’s travel ban, despite the president’s public statements identifying Muslims as the ban’s target, on the basis that the order itself did not mention religion, a blueprint for allowing further discriminatory efforts to pass constitutional muster as long as the high court’s conservatives retain control. Later that year, the conservative justices, self-styled champions of the freedom of religion, denied a request by a Muslim death-row inmate to have an imam present for his execution, forcing the condemned man to make do with the prison’s Christian chaplain. In both cases, the Court’s conservatives could hide behind the letter of the law in dismissing the government’s official disapproval of Islam. But recent revelations in the census case will force the Roberts Court to decide whether America is a nation for all of its citizens, or a white man’s republic.

On the surface, State of New York v. United States Department of Commerce appears to be a dry question of administrative and constitutional law. In January 2017, the news leaked that the Trump administration wanted to add a question asking census respondents whether they were American citizens. The Trump administration enlisted the acting head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, John Gore, to state that the question should be included to improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. Wilbur Ross, the head of the Department of Commerce, which administers the census, insisted to Congress that this was the reason for the addition of the question. In fact, Ross had sought the addition of the question long before this rationale was provided.

A recent Court filing by groups challenging the addition of the citizenship question shows what the administration really had in mind. The filing shows that Thomas Hofeller, the late Republican redistricting expert, concluded that adding the citizenship question would, in his words, “be advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.” That analysis was offered in a 2015 memo, as Hofeller was helping Republicans draw redistricting lines that they believed would cement a majority in Congress. That memo, along with a 2017 document written by Hofeller on the subject, which contains some language identical to a later Justice Department memo on the matter, was turned over to the liberal group Common Cause by Hofeller’s daughter after his death.

Voting districts are typically drawn using total population. A switch to using the voting-age citizen population would, Hofeller concluded in his 2015 memo, expand white political power at the expense of people of color, and thereby increase Republican advantage. But, Hofeller wrote, that shift could only occur with the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which would provide the federal government with data necessary for that switch.

In other words, long before Trump was even elected, Republican Party insiders were plotting to increase white political power at the expense of people of color. After Trump was elected, they implemented this plan by insisting that their actual goal was the protection of minority voting rights. As with the Voting Rights Act, there was the real reason and the stated reason, the truth and the pretext. . . . . “No one believes that anyone in this administration has any intention of enforcing the Voting Rights Act.”

The use of the Civil Rights Division, which was established to protect Americans’ fundamental rights, to undermine those very rights is a perversion of justice. But it also illustrates that Trumpism merely traveled a few stops down the road from where the Republican Party leadership had been. The risk with Trump was not that the GOP would become a vehicle for the preservation of white political and cultural hegemony; it was that he would discredit that project by making its agenda explicit, by saying, as Scalia did, the quiet part loud.

That the Republican effort to increase white political power might be motivated by partisanship rather than racism is little solace. . . . Whether motivated by partisanship or racism, though, the result is the same. If the Roberts Court does not draw a line here, this will not be the last step toward reestablishing a white man’s government it will be asked to take.

The census case does not hinge on whether the citizenship question is discriminatory. Rather, as a matter of administrative law, the executive branch must follow certain procedures before making decisions. The Trump administration’s blatant dishonesty settles the question of whether it followed procedure definitively: It did not.

“This kind of smoking-gun evidence of what the real illicit reason is behind a government action is incredibly rare. Court decisions don’t require it, and it’s really quite shocking to read it so explicitly,” Wendy Weiser, a voting-rights expert at the Brennan Center, told me. “Every procedural constraint on agency decisions was violated in this case, and the reason that was provided, every lower court found, was not the real reason that the secretary of commerce added the citizenship question.”

The census case is not ultimately about administrative procedure; it is, more fundamentally, about whether the Trump administration can use the federal government for the explicit purpose of increasing white political power. The Trump administration, and by extension, the conservative masses, are already on board, convinced by years of right-wing propaganda that all the opposition’s victories at the ballot box are suspect. Those elements of the Republican establishment that funded and conceived of the census scheme are all in, as well. The only remaining question is whether, and to what extent, the high court is willing to ratify this step toward white man’s government. It is not the first time it has been asked to do so.

Trump’s victory settled the question of whether the GOP would seek to expand its base by diversifying it, or rely on the imposition of white political hegemony over a changing electorate. This is a counter-majoritarian strategy that, in the long run, relies on abandoning the pretense of liberal democracy in favor of something else: A white man’s republic, if they can keep it.

Trump/the GOP Can’t Win the War on Demography

I for one hope that 2016 and the nightmare election of Der Trumpenführer will prove to be the last gasp of aging right wing/Christofascist whites in their attempt to turn back time and magically stop the demographic changes sweeping the nation.  True, wherever possible, Republicans will strive to disenfranchise non-whites and the young, but those efforts will sooner or later fail to stop the wave of demographic change that will make both whites and traditional Christians a minority in America.  Candidly, in my view, that ultimate defeat of the GOP and Trump voters cannot come soon enough.  Perhaps being gay - a hated minority to many - makes one open their eyes to the failings and ugliness of the majority as well as the common humanity of other minorities.  Whatever the cause, I simple cannot understand the hysterical fear of those who are different. A column in the New York Times looks at the unwinnable war Trump and the racist GOP are fighting.  It also looks at the distortions in policies and funding that the quest to maintain "whiteness" will have on the country.  Here are column highlights:

Since the early days of his campaign, from his proposal to build a wall along the Mexican border to his discredited committee on voter fraud, President Trump has declared war on America’s changing demography. His administration has followed through on that strategy with a proposal to add a question to the 2020 census asking about citizenship.

If it is added to the census form, the citizenship question will distort our understanding of who resides in the country. What this selective underenumeration will not do is make America’s growing racial minority populations disappear. The losers from this undercount include members of Mr. Trump’s older white base, who will suffer from lost investments in a younger generation, whose successes and contributions to the economy will be necessary to keep America great.

The demographic trends make this plain. America’s white population is growing tepidly because of substantial declines among younger whites. Since 2000, the white population under the age of 18 has shrunk by seven million, and declines are projected among white 20-somethings and 30-somethings over the next two decades and beyond. This is a result of both low fertility rates among young whites and modest white immigration — a trend that is not likely to change despite Mr. Trump’s wish for more immigrants from Norway.

The likely source of future gains among the nation’s population of children, teenagers and young working adults is minorities — Hispanics, Asians, blacks and others — most of whom are born in the United States.

Indeed, the only part of the white population that is growing appreciably is older people, the same group to whom Mr. Trump is appealing. Thanks to aging baby boomers, the older retirement-age white population will grow by one-third over the next 15 years and, with it, the need for the government to support Social Security, Medicare, hospitals and the like. Revenue for these programs will have to come from the younger minority population.

Although the slowly growing, rapidly aging white population will be accurately counted, the fast-growing minority school-age and young adult populations that represent the nation’s future will not get their due — demographically, politically or economically.

An in-house Census Bureau analysis based on 2010 survey data found that the inclusion of a citizenship question reduced the response rate among households that have at least one noncitizen individual. While 7 percent of United States residents are themselves noncitizens, 14 percent live in households that include one or more noncitizens. The latter figure rises to 46 percent among all Hispanics and to 45 percent among Asian-Americans, compared with just 8 percent among blacks and 3 percent among whites.

Let’s assume that one in three people in Hispanic and Asian noncitizen households refuses to answer the census. If that’s the case, the Hispanic share of the United States population would drop by 2.1 percentage points (from 17.3 to 15.2 percent) and the total white population share would rise by 2.2 percentage points (from 62 to 64.2 percent).

This imbalance would influence congressional reapportionment, hurting large, immigrant-heavy states. It will also shape how congressional and state legislative districts are drawn, favoring rural and small areas at the expense of large metropolitan areas, since noncitizen households are far more prevalent in the latter.

The underenumeration of racial minorities would also misallocate billions of dollars in state and federal funds for housing assistance, job training, community development and a variety of social services that should be distributed on the basis of census counts. It would provide a faulty framework for surveys that will inform thousands of policy and business decisions, such as where to locate schools, hospitals, employment sites or retail establishments catering to different population groups, over the next decade.

Through his rhetoric and actions, Mr. Trump stands for keeping America white, appealing to his base by implicitly promising to preserve the racial status quo. But Mr. Trump’s supporters, and the country in general, must not ignore the generational dependency between older whites and younger minorities. Forcing an inaccurate accounting of who resides in the nation will have long-term negative consequences for everyone.

For the record, both the husband and I have extended family members who are of mixed race..  Some are half Asian and others are part black.  All are decent and responsible individuals - far more decent than Trump's bigoted and hypocrisy-filled base.

Trump's Improper War on Blue States

Among the many threats that Der Trumpenführer directs at all kinds of targets - typically, those who reject his lies and/or refuse to embrace his racist agenda - is that federal funds will be withheld from blue states that voted against Trump in the presidential election and/or refuse to cooperate in Trump's effort to terrorize undocumented immigrants. The irony, of course, is that blue states contribute far more to the federal government that they receive back and, therefore, indirectly finance red states that are the states equivalents of the welfare queens constantly derided by right wing Republicans.  The ongoing warfare between the White House and blue states such as California (with its voting record of late and Democrat led state government, Virginia could soon find itself a target of Trump's untethered wrath).   In the eye of the storm is the always despicable Jeff Sessions, and man with a long documented history of racism and bigotry, who is acting with no statutory authority.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this disturbing situation.  Here are article excerpts:

In the civil war now being waged in this country, the combatants are not the blue and the gray of old. It’s the White House versus the blue states.

And the weapons aren’t cannon balls but rather the threatened withholding of federal money from “sanctuary” cities and states, the plan for the next census that would have the effect of shrinking liberal states’ representation in Congress, and the cap on tax deductions that will strike at residents of cities and states where high tax rates support decent public services.

While California is most prominently in the administration’s cross hairs . . . . the free state of California is not the only target. Chilling headlines like a recent one in a local newspaper in New Haven — “ICE Lies in Wait at Elm Street Courthouse” — are appearing all over the country as federal agents stalk and capture undocumented immigrants and leave the rest of us to shudder at tactics we used to ascribe to countries we regarded with disdain.

Those old enough to remember the Rehnquist federalism revolution of the 1990s and early 2000s will recall how startling it was when Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s long-sought majority began to rein in the federal government’s authority over the states with an enthusiasm and to a degree not seen since the early years of the New Deal.

The federal government can’t “commandeer” the states to carry out its enforcement objectives, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the majority in a 1992 case, New York v. United States, invalidating a federal plan to oblige the states to help dispose of radioactive waste. “Congress must accord states the esteem due them as joint partners in a federal system,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a 1999 case, Alden v. Maine, immunizing the states from suits for violations of federal labor law.

[T]he current reversal of polarity is head-snapping. The Trump administration is not only commandeering local courthouses as convenient places to trap its prey, it also seeks to punish cities and states that resist.

That effort ran into a major roadblock last week in the form of a decision by the federal appeals court in Chicago. The three-judge panel blocked the effort by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to withhold millions of dollars in federal law-enforcement grant money from cities and states that fail to give advance notice to federal authorities when individuals who are “believed to be aliens” are expected to be released from custody or deny federal agents access to jails to meet with them . . . 

[A]ll three judges were Republican appointees, . . . .  Attorney General Sessions, Judge Rovner wrote, “repeatedly characterizes the issue as whether localities can be allowed to thwart federal law enforcement. That is a red herring. First, nothing in this case involves any affirmative interference with federal law enforcement at all, nor is there any interference whatsoever with federal immigration authorities. The only conduct at issue here is the refusal of the local law enforcement to aid in civil immigration enforcement . . . .

The judge added, “The choice as to how to devote law enforcement resources — including whether or not to use such resources to aid in federal immigration efforts — would traditionally be one left to state and local authorities.”

Congress granted the department no such authority, the appeals court concluded, nor can the statute be interpreted as bestowing it inherently. To quote Judge Rovner: “We are faced, then, with conditions on the receipt of critical law enforcement funds that have been imposed by the attorney general without any authority in a manner that usurps the authority of Congress — made more egregious because Congress itself has repeatedly refused to pass bills with such restrictions.”

Judge Rovner wrote . . . The founders of our country well understood that the concentration of power threatens individual liberty and established a bulwark against such tyranny by creating a separation of powers among the branches of government. If the executive branch can determine policy, and then use the power of the purse to mandate compliance with that policy by the state and local governments, all without the authorization or even acquiescence of elected legislators, that check against tyranny is forsaken.”

And if that wasn’t strong enough medicine, her opinion includes this observation: “It falls to us, the judiciary, as the remaining branch of the government, to act as a check on such usurpation of power.”

Nor is there middle ground in another front in the new civil war: the Trump administration’s decision, announced on March 26, to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. California, New York, the N.A.A.C.P., and others promptly filed lawsuits.

The legal complaints assert that requiring people to reveal their citizenship status will predictably depress participation, thereby preventing the government from obeying the constitutional command to conduct an “actual enumeration” every 10 years. . . . . In other words, while there is little chance that the citizenship question will produce a more accurate census, there is every chance that it will bring about a shift in the national balance of power.

New York, heading a plaintiff coalition of 16 states and several cities, asserts in its complaint that “a person-by-person citizenship demand that leads to a systematic undercount of minority populations across the United States will impair fair representation of those groups and the states in which they live.”

“A state of war is not a blank check for the president,” Justice O’Connor famously wrote in one of the cases that reached the court during that period. That goes for a civil war, too.

Census: Over 1 in 3 USA Counties Dying Off

By Hope Yen of Associated Press

The trend toward a more urban population in America is accelerating and rural counties - the bastions of the Republican Party - are dying off and seeing drops in population.  The irony is that as the populations in many of these counties double down on their conservatism, the population losses only increase as younger residents leave for more liberal and progressive areas that offer more job opportunities and social amenities.  It's a trend that is clearly visible in Southwest Virginia where the political/religious establishment tries to hang onto the 1950's while unemployment remains inordinately high.  Here are excerpts from a piece at MSN News that looks at the Census findings:

New 2012 census estimates released Thursday highlight the population shifts as the U.S. encounters its most sluggish growth levels since the Great Depression.

The findings also reflect the increasing economic importance of foreign-born residents as the U.S. ponders an overhaul of a major 1965 federal immigration law. Without new immigrants, many metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and St. Louis would have posted flat or negative population growth in the last year.

"Immigrants are innovators, entrepreneurs. They're making things happen. They create jobs," said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, at an immigration conference in his state last week. Saying Michigan should be a top destination for legal immigrants to come and boost Detroit and other struggling areas, Snyder made a special appeal: "Please come here."

Census data show that 1,135 of the nation's 3,143 counties are now experiencing "natural decrease," where deaths exceed births. That's up from roughly 880 U.S. counties, or 1 in 4, in 2009. Already apparent in Japan and many European nations, natural decrease is now increasingly evident in large swaths of the U.S., much of it rural.

Despite increasing deaths, the U.S. population as a whole continues to grow, boosted by immigration from abroad and relatively higher births among the mostly younger migrants from Mexico, Latin America and Asia.

"These counties are in a pretty steep downward spiral," said Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer and sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire, who researched the findings. "The young people leave and the older adults stay in place and age. Unless something dramatic changes — for instance, new development such as a meatpacking plant to attract young Hispanics — these areas are likely to have more and more natural decrease."

Mark Mather, an associate vice president at the Population Reference Bureau, noted that political efforts to downsize government and reduce federal spending could also have a significant impact on future population winners and losers.

Since 2010, many of the fastest-growing U.S. metro areas have also been those that historically received a lot of federal dollars, including Fort Stewart, Ga.; Jacksonville, N.C.; Crestview, Fla.; and Charleston-North Charleston, S.C., all home to military bases. Per-capita federal spending rose from about $5,300 among the fastest-growing metros from 2000 to 2010, to about $8,200 among the fastest-growing metros from 2011 to 2012.

"Federal funding has helped many cities weather the decline in private sector jobs," Mather said.
Other findings:

— Roughly 46 percent of rural counties just beyond the edge of metropolitan areas experienced natural decrease, compared with 17 percent of urban counties.
— As a whole, the population of non-metropolitan areas last year declined by 0.1 percent, compared with growth of 1 percent for large metro areas and 0.7 percent for small metropolitan areas.
— In the last year, four metro areas reached population milestones: Los Angeles hit 13 million, Philadelphia reached 6 million, Las Vegas crossed 2 million and Grand Rapids, Mich., passed 1 million.
— Chattahoochee County, Ga., home to Fort Benning, was the nation's fastest-growing county, increasing 10.1 percent in the last year.

Although the study doesn't cite conservatism per se as a problem, here in Virginia many rural areas find it difficult to attract new business and industry because they are so culturally backward  and  unwelcoming to those who aren't white conservatives.  Martinsville, Virginia, is a case in point.  The area is scenically beautiful, but if you are gay, black, Hispanic and non-Christian, you will likely not be welcomed.

Gay In Small -Town USA Per Census Figures

The Atlantic has new numbers from the Census have been corrected to delete previous reporting errors which reveal 646,464 self-reported same-sex couples across the nation. Obviously, the figure is likely much higher given the fear that many faced to so self-identify (e.g., all the same sex coupes in Hampton Roads where one or both members of a couple are U.S. military service members and subject to DADT at the time of the census). In Virginia, it's not surprising that liberal - at least in relative terms Charlottesville appears to lead the way with the highest percentage of same sex couples. With the death of DADT, hopefully Hampton Roads' figures will jump upward.

Census DATA Reveals Decreasing White Population in 15 States

New census data will no doubt further energize the Christian Right and its white supremacist allies - that's assuming, of course that the two groups are not one and the same - and cause even more hysteria that "white civilization" is under attack. For a group that likes to put minority rights up to a public vote, the irony is that some day they may find themselves in the minority and have helped set the stage for their own downfall. What's interesting is that the declining white percentages of the population are not confined to boarder states with growing Hispanic populations, but include parts of the Northeast, Mid-West and the South. The KKK loving Tony Perkins and his cohorts at Family Research Council must be hyperventilating indeed! Here are some excerpts from a Washington Post story:

Non-Hispanic whites are a dwindling share of the U.S. population, with their numbers dropping in the Northeast and Midwest and growing only modestly in the South and West, the Census Bureau said Thursday. Whites declined in 15 states, almost all in the industrial and farming states from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, and from Kansas to Ohio. They also declined in California and three Southern states, including Maryland.

A Census Bureau analysis of the 2010 count showed that the number of non-Hispanic whites rose over the decade from 194.5 million to 197 million, but the 1.2 percent growth rate fell far short of the national increase of 9.7 percent. Non-Hispanic whites are now 64 percent of the population, down from 69 percent a decade ago. The census also reported that the black population grew by 12 percent.

The number of Hispanics and Asians is soaring, the number of blacks is growing slowly and whites are almost at a standstill.

Hispanics are an ethnic group of people who can be of any race. Most Hispanics identified themselves as white. The number of whites who indicated for the census that they are Hispanic increased by 56 percent.

Whites who are not Hispanic are getting older on average, and have low birthrates that, when coupled with the high birthrates of Hispanics and Asians, make whites a smaller share of the population with every census count.

Some states experienced outsize growth in the white population. The number rose by 10 percent or more in Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. The District, which the census treats as a state for statistical purposes, had a 32 percent leap in whites.

Every state saw its multiple-race population jump by at least 8 percent, and some of the largest increases were in the South. The number of multiracial people more than doubled in the Carolinas and came close to doubling in Georgia and Delaware. Nine of the 10 states with the biggest increases were Southern states.

Yep, not good news for the Christianists and white supremacy crowd. For those of us who don't judge others based upon the color of their skin or ethnic background, it's no big deal.

Census Findings - More Same Sex Couples

I suspect that the actual number of same sex couples has not increased drastically over the past decade and that instead, more are merely open about their relationships and feel comfortable in reporting the truth about their lives on census forms and other such tracking questionnaires. Or maybe they are simply tired of hiding who they are. Whatever the reason, census data shows a rise in same sex couples and our increased visibility will make it increasingly difficult for legislators in backward states like Virginia to pretend that gay households do not exist as they go through contortions to kiss the asses of Christianists such as those at The Family Foundation and other Christian extremists groups of which Virginia seems to have an abundance. The Boston Globe looks at the data for Massachusetts where there's been 1 17% increase in same sex couples that have so identified. Here are some highlights:
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In the decade that saw Massachusetts become the first state to legalize gay marriage, the number of reported same-sex couples in the state climbed sharply, suggesting to many advocates that there is a growing public acceptance and that more gay couples are willing to declare their relationships openly.
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Since 2000, the number of couples living together in the state who identified themselves as same sex rose roughly 17 percent, to more than 20,000, according to the latest estimates from the US Census Bureau.
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In 2009, the state’s proportion of same-sex couples ranked among the country’s highest, and census surveys showed gay couples living across the state, in communities large and small.
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The increase in same-sex couples was more pronounced nationally than in Massachusetts, suggesting that changes in reporting were largely responsible, according to Gary J. Gates, a researcher who specializes in same-sex demographics at UCLA’s Williams Institute. Gates notes that the largest increases tended to be in rural and socially conservative parts of the country where couples might have previously been reluctant to acknowledge their relationship, if only by checking a box on a census form.
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You would expect they would have a bigger closet in 2000,’’ he said, listing Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Utah among the states with the largest increases in same-sex couples.
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[M]any older gay couples remain wary of reporting their status honestly, despite the legal gains and cultural shifts. “The habits of a lifetime,’’ she said. That is changing, especially among young adults.
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Many same-sex partners report that they are married, even in states where gay marriage is not recognized. In the most recent census survey, some 47 percent of same-sex couple households in Massachusetts described themselves as married, compared to 33 percent in 2000.

Evidence Shows Census Worker Murdered

We still do not know many details on who killed part time U.S. census worker, Bill Sparkman, who was found hanged in a rural Kentucky cemetery. One thing seems clear, however - this was MURDER and not a case of suicide as some had tried to put out initially. Moreover, the fact that Sparkman was a federal worker does seem to have played a part in his murder. The next question becomes whether or not Sparkman was a victim of the anti-government hysteria being fanned by Glenn Beck and other demagogues who are stirring up the birther and teabagger nutcases. If he was a victim of this type of hate, who will be next? Gays? Jews? Those perceived to be Hispanic immigrants? Something truly needs to be done to shut down the growing hatred being spewed by the far right. Here are highlights from the New York Times that certainly suggest that this was no ordinary murder:

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BIG CREEK, Ky. (AP) -- A part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape, said an Ohio man who discovered the body two weeks ago. The word ''fed'' was written in felt-tip pen on 51-year-old Bill Sparkman's chest, but authorities have released very few other details in the case, such as whether they think it was an accident, suicide or homicide.

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Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was certain from the gruesome scene that someone killed Sparkman. ''He was murdered,'' Weaver said. ''There's no doubt.'' Weaver said he was in the rural Kentucky county for a family reunion and was visiting some family graves at the cemetery on Sept. 12 along with his wife and daughter when they saw the body. ''The only thing he had on was a pair of socks,'' Weaver said. ''And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something.''

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''And they even had duct tape around his neck,'' Weaver said. ''And they had like his identification tag on his neck. They had it duct-taped to the side of his neck, on the right side, almost on his right shoulder.'' Authorities have refused to say if Sparkman was at work going to door-to-door for census surveys before he died. Both of the people briefed on the investigation confirmed Sparkman's Census Bureau ID was found taped to his head and shoulder area.

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The Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door interviews in the rural county pending the investigation. State Trooper Don Trosper said it was clear this wasn't a natural death but said all other possibilities were being considered.

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This is a truly horrible thing. Those responsible need to be caught and it will be interesting what motivated them. Obviously, Sparkman's job as a census workers does seem to have involvement.